Update: I was unfortunately not aware of Shamus Young's severe criticism of Fallout 3 available here to link in the original piece and I regret that. It dovetails rather nicely with what I've written and it's much better executed than my piece. I strongly recommend anyone...

Product Overview: The original Rare Ltd. team behind “Viva Piñata” has reunited to bring gamers “Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise,” the newest piñata adventure that invites gamers to return to magical Piñata Island. Unfortunately, not all is well on the island, as Professor Pester along with his gang of Ruffians have wiped out Piñata Central’s computer records, which poses a threat to parties everywhere. To help Piñata Central, players must gradually rebuild the computer database by sending piñatas at full candiosity to parties all around the world. While thwarting Professor Pester’s evil plot, players still build and maintain piñata gardens — using their creativity and imagination to attract, trap, protect, train and manage more than 100 different piñata species. With hundreds of customizable features, your garden will be unique as you attract piñatas or choose to capture exotic species from other lands including the Dessert Desert or Piñarctic.

Available exclusively on Xbox 360, “Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise” reinvigorates a colorful and engaging gaming experience on the Xbox 360 platform. Letting two players play together and support for up to 4 players to work collaboratively on a garden over Xbox LIVE, “Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise” provides hours of fun for gamers of all ages, fans of the animated series and animal lovers alike.

Features:

Top game features include the following:

• Social. The “Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise” community is a rewarding place to be, whether you remain within the boundaries of your own world or venture out into a friend’s garden via Xbox LIVE.*

o Online interaction. Via Xbox LIVE, up to four players can team up and experience the joys of Piñata Island together, or you can contact other gamers to trade items as well as piñatas. Invite your friends to your garden to compete against them in races, golf and other events — winners will receive coveted placement on the Piñata Leaderboards.*

o Offline interaction. Invite a family member or friend to experience Piñata Island by simply plugging in an extra controller. As your friend helps you with your garden, they will attain magical powers that can be used to nurse a sick piñata creature back to health or help speed a piñata to maximum candiosity. It’s a whole new way to play.

• Customizable. “Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise” allows players’ imaginations to run wild by providing them with expansive freedom and choice.

o Your garden. Not only can you travel to exciting new regions and explore their unique wildlife, but “Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise” also offers a vast level of customization within your garden. Now, along with planting grass, trees and flowers, and digging ponds and lakes, players can place sand and snow in their garden to make exotic species of piñata feel right at home. Players also can choose to enhance their garden with themed object packs — make your garden into a space center, a pirate cove or a haunted graveyard. Buy objects to change the weather, or new toys for your piñata to play with. You have total freedom to create any kind of paradise you want!

o Your piñatas. Thirty-two new species of piñata can run, crawl, fly and swim into your garden in “Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise.” Large, small, fierce and cute, the new piñatas will join all your favorites for thriving activity throughout your garden. Among these new species are sour piñatas that will infiltrate and wreak havoc in the garden. In “Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise,” players can choose to either tame sours, or feed them candy to keep them sweet.

o Piñata Vision. A never-before-seen feature called Piñata Vision allows players to plug in an Xbox LIVE Vision Camera to create custom piñata cards that they can collect and trade with friends. With Piñata Vision, gamers can simply flash a piñata card up to the Vision camera, and the piñata, plant, tree, object or accessory will drop directly into the game.

• Accessible. “Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise” reinvigorates the franchise with additional game modes and features that make it even more accessible to players of all ages and skill levels.

o Just for Fun Mode. Designed for kids and first time visitors to Piñata Island, this mode allows players to jump into a garden and interact with the inhabitants of this unique piñata world. With the level of difficulty turned down, sour piñatas stay away, resident piñatas remain healthy, weeds don’t plague your garden and you have an infinite chocolate coin bank account, allowing you to turn your garden into a veritable utopia of colorful creatures, garden ornaments and unique play areas such as the retro 70’s lighted disco floor.

o Standard Mode. Presenting a challenge for experienced piñata gardeners and dedicated gamers, the Standard gameplay mode provides a more challenging option, where players must keep a watchful eye on their garden. Sour piñatas, feuding species, weeds, illness and limited money call for you to exercise problem solving and creativity to build and maintain an environment where piñatas can flourish and grow.

o Player Guide System. Replacing the traditional tutorial, the optional Player Guide System directs players through a series of loose goals to help them master the fundamental aspects of creating a garden in “Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise.”

o Show Off. Using the new photo mode in “Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise,” you can snap pictures of your unique garden or customized piñatas and show them to your friends and other players over Xbox LIVE and online. You also can photograph your piñata and turn it into a piñata card, which your friends can print and show to their Xbox LIVE Vision Camera to put it into their garden.*

o Piñata and character interaction. All your residents are now capable of performing dazzling tricks, which you can teach them using the new trick stick tool. Watch as piñatas play together, perch on each other and interact in cool new ways.

• Spontaneous. “Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise” is a constantly changing world where anything can and does happen. Rivalries, injuries, illness and fights — if you turn your back, who knows what your piñatas will do?

o It’s happening outside. Pester knows where your garden is, and he’s got a few nasty tricks up his sleeve to make piñata life difficult. Foil his plans by sending your piñata around the world to save parties everywhere. Also, you must deal with new, untamed sour piñatas with bad attitudes and more troublesome Ruffians who will try to spoil your creation.

o It’s happening inside. Pester will try to block piñatas from ever reaching your garden, but you can break the blockades and teach him who is in charge on Piñata Island. However, don’t underestimate Pester — he’s likely to make some personal appearances to attempt to put you in your place.

Developer Information: Founded in 1985 and based in the United Kingdom, Rare Ltd. is one of the world’s leading video game developers and has masterminded some of the most popular video games in history, including multi-million-dollar sellers “GoldenEye”, “Perfect Dark”, “Banjo-Kazooie” and the “Donkey Kong Country” Series. From 2005 to 2006, Rare released “Perfect Dark Zero”, “Kameo: Elements of Power” and “Viva Piñata” for Xbox 360. Rare continues to entertain the world with the release of “Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts” and “Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise” later this year. For further information visit www.rare.co.uk.

Content on this page comes directly from press releases and fact sheets provided by publishers and developers and was not written by the Game Revolution staff.